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The Mood of a Room: Using Colour Psychology to Sell Your Home with the Top Colours of 2025
- Sue & Claire
- Oct 22
- 4 min read
Colour has an impact on every subconscious decision of our lives.
It is used in branding, packaging and advertising choices. Home décor, logos and more. All to influence the ways consumers feel. Ever noticed how banks often have blue logos? Take Barclays, Halifax or PayPal, for instance. Banks and payment providers often have blue in their logos because it is a colour that is associated with loyalty and reliability, aligning with the ethos of what the banks want to portray to the customer.
However, it's not just corporations that can benefit from colour psychology.
Understanding and harnessing the way you can use colour psychology through your staging décor can also help you maximise the potential of your home when staging for selling.
Take these two pictures of a living room, for example.
Which one feels more inviting?
And now these bedrooms. Which one feels more relaxing?
The way these colours create different moods in the same rooms is more impactful than the average homeowner might think.
If you can influence the look, feel and energy in your property, you can influence how the buyer will think.
If you influence the way the buyer will think, you might just get that sale.
How can you utilise this in your Home Staging?
When it comes to emotional responses, it is crucial to consider how different tones, hues and warmth will make a prospective home buyer feel, and most importantly, where you want them to feel it.
In general, warm tones such as red, orange and yellow help to invoke energy and vibrancy into the room. These can be utilised in busy and communal areas such as living rooms and kitchens. Although they are best used sparingly, to avoid overwhelming the buyer’s senses.
Cooler tones like green and blue can help to make the room feel more serene and calm. These can work well in bedrooms, bathrooms and home office areas where calmness, creativity or relaxation are prioritised. However, they can make a room feel cold and uninviting, so it can be important to consider how to warm them up, either by altering the warmth of the shade or adding a pop of a different colour.
Colour theory can help guide your decisions when it comes to where you want to create energy and dynamism in your home, while creating a calming effect in areas where you want to promote tranquillity and serenity.
To help, it can help to familiarise yourself with the colour harmony. Why certain colours just ‘work’. Jill Morton writes a fascinating article on colour theory, and demonstrates three main formulas for harmonious colour schemes.
1. Analogous colour harmony:
Colours that work in harmony due to their proximity on the colour wheel. Think similar shades of blues & greens that might work nicely together in a bedroom.
2. Complementary colour harmony:
Colours that are opposites of each other on the colour wheel that create a striking contrast, such as green & pink, blue and orange, etc. One colour might be more dominant than the other, sometimes just providing a much-needed ‘pop’ of colour.
3. Natural colour schemes:
This includes colours from nature that are able to create a harmonious design. Morton includes these as a third formula, as these can work to create a harmonious colour palette, regardless of the colour’s technical fit into the two above categories.
So, how can you use this theory practically?
Top home staging colours for 2025 and why they work so well.
1. Warm neutrals:
As the name suggests, these can help keep the home ‘neutral’. This might be setting off some alarm bells in your mind – ‘I want my home to stand out, not blend in!’ However, having light shades and soft colours can work wonders in your home styling.
They make the space feel comforting and inviting.
They are a safe bet for home staging, as warm shades of beige and whites go with most furniture you may already have.
The ‘light and bright’ look helps your home feel clean and peaceful – an important aspect to someone looking to buy a house.
With the neutral palette that doesn’t dominate, the prospective buyer can better envision themselves in your home with their own unique belongings and style.
To avoid the space feeling too empty and sterile, it can be livened up with different textures, such as rattan, fur, leather or other soft furnishings.
2. Soft blues
Using blues can invoke feelings of calm and tranquillity in your home, but if the wrong tone is used, it can make the space feel cold and uninviting.
Warm blues can navigate this challenge effectively by still providing the calming effect, yet not making the space feel cold. Shades of dusty blues can also work around this challenge.
These blues can work well in bedrooms, bathrooms and offices, both with complementary colours, as well as part of an analogous colour scheme.
3. Terracotta hues
In contrast, where spaces are being used to generate energy and life, such as living rooms and kitchens, warm colours are helpful. Warm tones of terracotta and burnt orange can invoke appetite, life and energy.
This colour can be especially impactful when paired with tones of green. Green can add a vibrance and a pleasant balance, as part of a complementary colour scheme inspired by shades of nature.
4. Pink and Green tones
Tones of pink also work well with green, focusing especially on soft, dusty tones to avoid colour overstimulation when using two contrasting colours.
This complementary colour scheme works well for creating a dynamic contrast, with shades of pink adding vibrancy, and green to balance the room and create a natural, serene element to your home.
So when it comes to decorating your property, redesigning your home, or even just looking to give your space a ‘little pick me up’, colour theory could be the new secret weapon you use to control the mood of your room.
Bibliography and more information:
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